


Storms

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Amnesia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:32:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if, when Loki fell at the end of the movie, he fell upon Midgard. Upon falling, his memory and magicks are sealed. Thunder storms always make Loki smile but he doesn't know why. Thor doesn't give up looking for his little brother and those thunder storms that roll on by are him looking for the God of Mischief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A belated deanon from the kinkmeme.

The first weeks were a frightening experience. Dressed like he’d walked straight out of an Avengers headline and running from something he couldn’t remember, it was days before any of the people who stopped to stare at him dared to offer to help. An older woman had taken his hand when he’d been cowering in a doorway to avoid the snow; he was convinced that the falling flakes would turn him blue and it terrified him.

She’d tucked his cloak around him so the snow couldn’t touch him, gently as he was so anxious he trembled, and invited him to her home for some dinner. Far from refusing and running, he clung to her hand and refused to let go, calling her Mother without realising he’d done so. He’d been gently corrected- “You can call me Carol”- but when she asked him his own name he’d drawn a blank. Rather than let him panic, she tugged him after her, minding that his cloak kept him covered, and told him names could wait until after dinner.

Feeding him was a lesson in difficulty. He wouldn’t touch anything put in front of him: he played with his food so much that his benefactor, Carol, threatened to put him in timeout. He’d forgotten to ask what that meant at the time. His eating habits hadn’t improved since then. Everyone he knew claimed he was the fussiest eater they’d ever met.

Over dinner that first night, when Carol had finally coaxed him into eating a salad, the extent of his memory loss came to light. He had no clue where he was, who he was; even the when was a guess rather than a certainty. Turned out he was off by almost a year. Everything in between the keywords was gone as well: his past began on a street five days before, with a thumping headache and frost limning his hands where they lay against the pavement.

When they’d been over it for the fifth fruitless time, just in case anything started coming back with reiteration, Carol declared that she knew a doctor and they’d ask for help in the morning. Until then, his name was “my dear” and it was strongly recommended that he go to bed. She showed him to a spare room, immaculately kept for children that never visited, left him a pair of pyjamas that had belonged to her late husband- “He wouldn’t mind, my dear; he won’t need them”- and wished him a good night.

He hadn’t slept. Outside, the snow was still falling and he was transfixed by it. He didn’t dare to touch it, not even to trace the intricate patterns growing on the windowsill that fascinated and horrified him so much. All night he watched them build up, til the sun rose and they melted together and drained away to nothing, just as he had. He remembered hoping it would never snow again.

The winter he’d arrived was the coldest on record: temperatures that measured in minus numbers were rarely encountered this far south. Snow was practically unheard of. Still, when Carol had finally cajoled him into leaving the house, in a dead man’s shirt and trousers and only after multiple assurances that the snow had melted, he was sweltering. She laughed when he told her, bundled up in woolly layers as she was, and said at least she knew where he was from: somewhere “cold as Satan’s backside” called Alaska.

Dr Aaron White was a man who clearly enjoyed his food, and his personality was as large as his stomach. He disliked the man on sight, with no idea why, and was torn between retreating behind Carol, despite the nine inch height difference, or standing between her and the vast, repellent man. She wasn’t afraid of the man at all though, greeting him with a smile and introducing “the dear boy I told you about” with no little difficulty. He’d refused to shake hands, not understanding the gesture at the time, absolutely certain the doctor’s hands would be greasy.

What followed was half an hour of useless questions- “I still don’t know, doctor”- and the world’s most awkward physical examination- “Is it really necessary for you to touch me?”- which he very reluctantly allowed only after watching the doctor wash his hands repeatedly. He was tense for the whole thing, from the time he had to be coaxed into removing his shirt- “Relax for me.” “No.”- to when he’d finally had enough and snatched it back.

The doctor had his hands slapped away several times while examining his head- “If I say that hurts, will you stop touching me?”- but managed to complete his assessment without finding any obvious injuries. Retrograde amnesia was the diagnosis, though the cause was uncertain. Given the lack of obvious injury, they could only assume it was psychological. The doctor recommended a psychiatrist, but couldn’t offer anything more than that at that early stage.

He hadn’t expected a miracle, but he still left feeling frustrated at the apparent dead end he’d hit. The sweltering winter sunlight dimmed as he stepped outside, clouding over with almost undue haste. The wind that gusted past him was cold enough to edge the grass with frost: it was almost refreshing in the heat.

Carol followed him out, after making his excuses to the doctor- “Memory loss would make anyone jumpy, Ron; don’t hold it against him”- as the clouds visibly darkened overhead. They bolted for the car together when the snow began to fall. As they pulled out of the car park into the worsening weather- “Don’t worry, my dear, it missed us”- he watched the bruises bloom under the snowflakes melting on his hand and closed his eyes til they disappeared again.

They watched the news that night as the snow piled up outside. Actually, Carol watched the news. He watched the snow from the window seat with half an ear on the news. Every channel complained about the inclement weather, weathermen scratching their heads over how a snowstorm could appear out of nowhere twice in two days. Even the national news took notice of Florida’s sudden take on an Alaskan winter, though only as a lead onto stranger happenings around New York. From what he could garner, magic and mecha and bizarre occurrences were normal for the northern city, and dealt with by a selection of colourful individuals who clearly shopped at the same place he got his only change of clothes from.

Carol loved watching these “superheroes” on the news and her comments made him chuckle, though she was entirely serious. She didn’t like the outfits the women wore- “You can see everything and those close ups add pounds! It’s not pretty!”- though it didn’t seem to bother her when it was the men in tight costumes- “The Captain can’t be wearing shorts under those pants; they’re far too tight. Nice view though. That Thor isn’t hard on the eyes either.”

He had frozen, and watched the windows ice up.

“Thor?” It was familiar, in a way that made his head ache behind his eyes.

“Yes, dear. The tall blond man in the cape. The TV says he’s some sort of God: I have to agree.”

He scrambled over to the TV to see, but the fleeting image of the man was about as familiar as Dr Aaron was: a nebulous association with nothing to back it up. Outside, there was a roar like thunder and he bolted to the window to see it, only to be disappointed again when it turned out to be hail crashing against the roof.

Carol watched him dart back and forth- “Are you ok, my dear?”- and worried for his sudden anxiety.

His mood crashed as the weather got worse. “I know Thor. Not him, but the name Thor. Is it my name?” It was more familiar with every reiteration, so he repeated it under his breath, waiting for it to click. It didn’t, and he was so frustrated he screamed, scaring Carol who had reached out to soothe him.

Thunder really crashed then. They both jumped, though it fascinated him in hindsight that Carol had interposed herself between him and the window- “Don’t be scared, my dear, it can’t hurt you in here”- as if to protect him. It was a strange thing for “Mother” to do, though he didn’t know why.

Lightning flashed directly overhead, illuminating the room in stark black and white. Carol yelped as the thunder roared past barely a second after. He smiled.

It was the most soothing thing he’d heard in his limited memory. He folded back into his seat by the window to watch a fork of lightning cut through the hailstorm, chased by a second rolling clash of thunder. The hail had dissipated like mist in sunlight, melting to rain and washing the snow away.

He fell asleep watching it. Carol wasn’t able to rouse him- “I don’t know how you could sleep through all that clattering and banging”- and eventually just tucked a blanket around him and left him to it.

The next few weeks were clear of snow, with only frost touching the grass in the early hours, but rife with storms. Every other day the lightning scorched the sky and thunder rattled the windows until Carol swore at it. He slept sound every one of those nights.

Across that time he suffered various tests at “Ron’s” hand, all of which turned up a very conspicuous amount of nothing. His only progress was his name.

Despite Carol’s misgivings- “Are you sure, my dear? You might just remember that name because it’s famous”- he insisted that “Thor” was too familiar to just be a celebrity’s name. So, being supportive, she introduced him to something called Google and they went looking for names.

They went through every “normal” variation on the name Thor without any luck, then found a list of names- “Oh, look at these! Icelandic? Well that’d be about right for you, wouldn’t it?”- that all began with the word Thor.

Halfway down the list, the penny dropped.

Thorleikr.

It was so close to right. The sounds were there, they sparked familiarity, but with no memory to back it up. They were like similarly cut keys: both fit the lock, but only one could open it. He hadn’t had the right one, but wasn’t close, close enough?

“Is it yours?”

He saw his cautious optimism reflected on Carol’s face.

“No, but I’ll take it.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Two years on, it was still too warm there. The balmy weather clung to him, making his skin itch, even when the locals were bundled up in jumpers and complaining about the chill in the air. He smiled through their grumbling and wore a scarf in deference to the cold his body told him wasn’t there. It was only a marginal discomfort when the weather was already too sticky for most clothing, let alone the worsted wool of his suit.

He might have picked a lighter material, but something about the weight was comforting despite the heat. Cotton and linen were strange things to be afraid of, but he was unreasonably anxious whenever he wore them. His colleagues, with Kelson who  ~~stole~~  shared his desk as the worst offender, joked that he’d be more comfortable in leather and chainmail- “The Thor look might work for you. Or Hercules: how do you feel about skirts?” He laughed at the time, because they did and it paid to let them think they saw eye to eye, but somehow it didn’t seem as ridiculous as they thought it did. They all thought he was a little strange, he knew that; he agreed with them. He had a little leeway though, with only two years of experience to work from.

It hadn’t snowed again since his first winter with Carol. The thunderstorms had kept up at first then they too had died down, and the peaceful nights with them, becoming only intermittent respites in what had moved beyond restless sleep into the realm of insomnia. Leikr only really slept well when the air scorched with the ozone smell of lightning and Carol’s cursing heralded thunder rattling the single glazing. Carol scolded him- “It’s called a coat, you silly boy!”- every time he came home drenched after a walk in the rain, shivering with elation, his lips touched blue.

On the rare occasion that a storm passed directly overhead, he always watched it from the porch. He could follow the light flaring across iron clouds for hours, bask in the welcome chill of the shower, and yet he always watched it pass with disappointment. It chafed against a blank in his memory, like when someone said his name and he moved to correct them, but lost the syllables on the tip of his tongue. When he called Carol a queen and meant it, but didn’t know why. When he accused Kelson of being “as bad as” and then had to let her fill the gap with “That Big Apple bad guy. What was his name... my sister had the game on her Atari...” when he came up blank. When they watched those news stories about the Avengers and his heart was in his mouth, which led him right back to sitting on the porch, hoping for a thunderstorm.

For a while he’d been content, but now that he wasn’t so distracted by how new the world was, those moments of half memory frustrated him. No matter how he might hope otherwise, the flashes made the fact of his current situation clear.

This wasn’t his life.

Leikr was fond of Carol, but even two years taking up her guest room seemed like nothing more than a brief stopover. He had a whole life somewhere else that he became more eager to return to the longer it remained a mystery. For now though, he could only continue as he was.

The change came that summer, with the hurricane season rolling in. They weren’t so far inland that the encroaching tropical storms weren’t a threat, so when Edouard looked set to make landfall Leikr insisted on preparing the house. Carol let him have his way, though she did chuckle at his expense a few times- “It’s only a Category 2, Leikr. It’ll never reach us; don’t worry so much.”- when his suggestions seemed a little excessive.

He spent a week of restless nights eyeing the news for updates and watching the weather from the porch. The fourth day it snowed in the evening. Two years since the last time it had happened: the fear hadn’t changed.

Refusing to be controlled by a phobia, Leikr dared to step out into the light fall, trying not to flinch at the flickers of cold on his face. The chill was a relief after the constant heat he’d never quite gotten used to, but the kiss of snowflakes against his face made him feel sick. Three steps and Leikr couldn’t stand it anymore. He bolted back inside and lay awake with his back to the window, not daring to look. It was gone by the morning.

Edouard blew itself out before the weekend, but the news was more interested in the aptly named Winter Haven’s bout of unseasonable weather, and the rush of thunderstorms it heralded. Leikr was starting to think he was creating them just to make himself feel better.

Florida was used to rain, but not the near constant thunderstorms they suffered for the next two weeks. Meteorologists wasted time by appearing on TV just to tell the general public that they were stumped: Storms didn’t appear out of nowhere, they couldn’t, but they had, and no one had an explanation. What they did have were flood threats and disaster protocol. Anyone who hadn’t prepped for Edouard was stocking up now.

Leikr convinced Carol to stay home while the weather warnings squawked louder and louder about potential flooding- “If it’ll help you sleep at night, my dear, but I have weathered floods before”- but continued to go to work while it remained open, fully admitting to Carol’s accusations of double standards: it was easier to explain than his near fanatic excitement at being abroad in the storm. To keep suspicion low, he let her bully him into a coat before he left, though even Leikr had to admit that without it he’d probably drown before he made it to work.

With half the area ransacking the local supermarkets for supplies before the lakes really began to overflow, the office was thinly staffed; everyone had an eye on the TV in the corner, permanently set to the weather. Kelson, watching the weather over the top of the form she was meant to be reading, spotted him first and gestured to his desk, and a pile of reading topped by a roll. Two years, and she’d yet to give up on plying him with sandwiches. Her current favourite, a fish and banana monstrosity, was probably lurking on the horizon and smelling foul in his direction.

(Kelson had introduced herself in rather unorthodox fashion- “I’m allergic to bigotry and I forgot my epipen today, so if you’ve got it, get out”- on his first day. It later transpired that she had the dubious distinction of having the ability to make seemingly random decisions that usually worked out, like hiring a paralegal with no background in law who turned out to be a font of knowledge on a wide variety of useful subjects. Kelson wasn’t surprised; Leikr definitely was.)

He worked through the stack she’d given him, adding a note whenever something occurred to him. It had stopped unnerving him that he knew so much and couldn’t say how. Kelson meanwhile had given up all pretence of actually working, and turned her attention to the windows.

“It may be time to pack up, people.”

They all turned from the doomsday predictions of the weather forecast, in time for a splintering crash to send them all surging to their feet, Leikr included. Just visible from the fourth floor, the long line of trees that bordered the building was missing a crown while the remainder bent their heads to the ferocity of the wind.

The fastest members of staff were already heading for the stairs.

The building fell before they’d made it down two storeys.

+

Hurricane Fay fell upon northern Florida with zero warning. No hurricane had ever spontaneously burst into life over land, let alone kept enough power to rage for hours at Category 5 before it eventually blew itself out. The news was hysterical with damage reports and estimated death tolls, while the public crawled out from beneath their shattered lives to be met with an absurdly mild, sunny day.

Tony didn’t tend to watch the weather, and rarely paid attention to hurricanes during hurricane season (because if you couldn’t predict a hurricane during the season for them, then you really needed to quit your day job) but this particular storm seemed a little bit more than Florida’s standard summer weather. 

Hurricane overland? Hardly unusual. Spontaneously appearing, long lasting Category Fives confined to an unfeasibly small area? That screamed “get your armour on, because Fury’s calling in five minutes to tell you to suit up and find out which of your catalogue of villains wants to drown Florida”.

It was actually seven minutes, but Tony didn’t quibble over the details.

Since most everyone else was staying at the cushy base S.H.I.E.L.D. requisitioned in the name of justice, they were halfway through debriefing when Tony finally arrived: debriefing here being a synonym for “giving a very guilty looking Norse god a sound telling off”.

“So who are we at war with this time? Frost Giants? Canada?”

“Florida,” Clint supplied.

Well, that was... utterly unsurprising.

“That hurricane was you?” Thor had the grace to look embarrassed. “That’s one hell of a tantrum, god boy.”

Nothing like watching a god squirm.

+

Leikr woke to the acute ache of concrete digging into his back. Cautiously he tried to move. The concrete creaked but didn’t budge. He had use of his arm and could move his head, but from the shoulder blades down the firm weight of what could be tonnes of rubble had him pinned.

_Such a small thing, but it would have been easier to shift the palace, if he’d had the misfortune to have the building resting on his chest._

The blackness around him glittered with bright pinpoints of light for a moment, almost like a backdrop of stars. Concussion, knowing his luck. He’d have to be careful.

_”That’s why you wear a helmet,” he sighed, glaring when the blonde man dared to grin around the arms of the doctor wrapping his head in bandages, “Or learn how to duck.”_

+

Tony could count on one hand the number of times Fury actually listened to one of his ideas and agreed with him. Not all of his ideas involved explosions and risk taking, though he seemed to be the only one who noticed. Working on good PR for the Avengers after Thor had a tantrum over Florida shouldn’t have been a good idea though: it should have been the obvious next step. That was assuming you were talking to people who had any experience with PR, and the only one in their little crew was Steve, seventy years out of date.

Admittedly, no one could be expected to volunteer for clean up duty and like it, even if there was a mild hilarity in watching a very repentant Thor stack blown down trees. Tony told him to treat it like Jenga: no one had corrected him yet. He was also enjoying leaving Steve to mount an offensive on the lurking pack of TV cameras and watching the results, until Janet came to his rescue and ruined it. Looked like the fluffy mike was boggling Steve’s ninety year old mind.

For a divine tantrum, Thor had done surprisingly little damage. Tony had been expecting something a little more biblical, possibly even involving a large boat of some sort if another pantheon saw fit to join in for shits and giggles. As it was, the damages were turning out to equate to about what Tony paid in tax for a year: a mind boggling amount for the normals, but tediously banal for everyone’s favourite billionaire.

Once they finished digging people out and stacking rubble, Tony even considered forking out for half of it as a “good faith gesture” or whatever they wanted to call it. He could put a bet on how long it would take the press to turn a “good faith effort” into a “graceless attempt to curry government favour” and get all his money back: a million on two weeks seemed reasonably safe.

Hank and Bruce were midway through digging out one of the few buildings that had completely collapsed- shoddy workmanship; they really needed to look into that- with Tony directing. It was one of only two places that had been occupied when it came down, the other being a bungalow on the other side of the town whose elderly occupant had been traumatised but unhurt, and quickly forgot the former when Steve had pulled her out. Apparently she fancied him when she was younger, though he’d been a bit before her time. Steve’s expression on hearing that had been photographed by a sneaky camera in Tony’s suit and stored on JARVIS for posterity.

Not quite the same happy story here. Most of the office occupants were milling around outside, beyond the police tape, but several were under the rubble. He’d found them all by this point- it gave him a chance to use his thermographic camera, cue excitement- and everyone was alive and accounted for. Well, almost everyone. He had one true blue coming up on his feed, so the unfortunate bastard had been dead for hours. Just an unlucky hit when the building came down. Tony didn’t want to be the one to tell Thor, though at the rate they were going they’d probably need his help to dig the guy up so they could identify him and bury him again.

In eleven hours they pulled twenty six people out of the rubble, all of them alive if not entirely in one piece (If a broken limb was all you came out of a collapsed building with though, it was Tony’s personal opinion that you should be very thankful).

Only one to go.

+

The concrete that held him pinned shifted, and Leikr breathed deep for the first time in hours. His bruised lungs protested the movement, and sparks of light glittered in front of his eyes as the sudden rush of oxygen left him light headed.

_”Careful.” Gentle hands cradled his head while the world swam before his eyes after an ill-advised attempt to sit up. There was laughter in that voice and safety in those hands. “Maybe it’s time you learned to duck.”_

The darkness lifted: a shaft of light fell on his outstretched hand. For a moment he was certain his skin was blue and tried to spread his curled fingers to check. He barely managed a twitch.

“We’ve got movement.” A voice overhead, sharp with authority.

“That’s impossible,” replied a silver voice, metallic like the taste of blood in his mouth, “his body temperature is measuring at 62.6°F.”

“And has been for the past seventeen hours,” interrupted another, a strong voice speaking softly. “That’s not algor mortis. He may be a mutant. There’s a cryokinetic at Xavier’s Academy whose body temperature is similar.”

It went dark again. A hand curled around his wrist, hot fingers tight against his skin. He could feel his pulse throbbing under the pressure.

“Only when he’s ice,” the discussion continued overhead. “He has a standard human body temperature the rest of the time.”

_“How is it you can wear so little in the winter and still be too warm?” He rolled his eyes rather than dignify the question with a response. “You must be made of ice, little brother.”_

Little brother?

“He’s alive.” Everything went quiet, except for the clatter of questions in Leikr’s head. The hand holding his retracted and the light falling through the hole lit him blue again.

“How?”

“You can debate that later. We need to get him out. Deliberations over his genetic structure can wait.”

The voices retreated after that, overtaken by the sound of shifting concrete. Leikr hadn’t heard it the whole time they were digging down to him: he must have been out cold.

_“Easy, brother,” a gentle voice hushed him as he started awake into a drugged darkness, “don’t move too fast. You’ve been asleep a while.”_

Dust choked his limited air as the rubble was moved. He coughed, felt the stretching ache of his bruised lungs, scraped his back against the abbreviated ceiling, and still failed to get the air.

Leikr didn’t have the presence of mind not to panic.

+

Tony didn’t notice the spread of ice until he couldn’t move. Frost grew along the edges of his armour, having already pinned his boots to the floor; he retained enough movement in the neck plates to see his fellow Avengers in similar straits, and without the protection his armour provided.

“You were right about the mutant, Banner!” he called over his shoulder. The burgeoning green in his peripheral suggested Bruce hadn’t found his quip funny. He couldn’t be sure: his neck wasn’t moving anymore.

Thor, out of immediate range of the ice, came roaring to their rescue. The ice shattered under a blow from Mjöllnir and freed them.

“Get him out before he does it again!” Steve yelled, staggering as his numb legs failed to hold him up.

Thor reacted a little more abruptly than intended. A second strike from Mjöllnir reduced the concrete to dust (Tony wished he’d thought of that earlier) and dropped the recovering Avengers into the crater with the not-so-dead man they’d been trying to dig out.

“Please refrain from dropping what’s left of the building on him!” Hank called as he extracted himself from the wreckage, grey with dust. Thor winced, and stored Mjöllnir out of reach of his overenthusiasm.

It was a contrite god- he’d been doing that a lot recently- who finally extracted the unfortunate man from the rubble.

+

There was no weight on his back anymore, but he couldn’t move, his body little more than a buzzing numbness below where the concrete had rested. He was light headed with relief and possibly concussion. The light of the overhead lamps shattered through the remnants of the debris, dappling his hands as whiteblue as the ice around them.

Ice?

_The snowy plains stretched out before them, endless and eerily silent. They were a splash of colour, bright as blood, on the cold monotony of the landscape. Eyecatching. They wouldn’t be alone for long._

As the dust settled and the air seeped in through the cracks, Leikr finally caught his breath. The ice around him melted away as if it had never been. His hands were pink enough in the light that he was almost fooled.

_His armour peeled away and withered to nothing under the icy touch, his skin freezing blue. Not black. He cut down the jötunn and watched the blue fade from his skin without leaving a mark._

“I have him!” An arm plunged through the debris and curled around his chest, hauling him up.

_“I have you, brother,” a soft voice whispered in his ear, an arm around his shoulders and a hand curled in his sodden hair all that was holding him together. He couldn’t speak for the swelling in his mouth. The stitches were stretched tight and stiff with blood._

The unfiltered light was too much for his eyes. He hissed and hid his face, his bruised body protesting the movement.

“Easy, friend,” boomed the voice overhead, heavy with familiarity. “You’re safe.”

_“Easy, brother.”_

Leikr felt something in him jar loose, slipping free from his slackening grip. His memories bled away, his name sliding out of reach (never a perfect fit), something new-old and unknown rising in its place. He wondered if this was what dying felt like.

He looked up through the light burning his dark eyes and had to blink twice before the man’s face came into focus. He froze.

_“You must be made of ice, little brother.”_

“Loki?”

Above them, the clouds darkened and gently it began to snow.


End file.
